


The Building of Tanglewood Manor

by Brightmorrow



Series: Enter the Tanglewood [3]
Category: Original Work
Genre: F/F, Fantasy, Lady Knights, Magic, Witches
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-31
Updated: 2020-03-31
Packaged: 2021-02-28 23:06:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 963
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23404981
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Brightmorrow/pseuds/Brightmorrow
Summary: Wherein Ellary, not-a-witch and not immune to the charms of traveling knights, dresses up for company.
Relationships: Helaine Brightmorrow/Ellary Clear, Original Female Character/Original Female Character
Series: Enter the Tanglewood [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1683643
Comments: 4
Kudos: 9





	The Building of Tanglewood Manor

The Witch Whistling stopped on the 6th day after the summer solstice, and for the first time since the thaw, there were no villagers dragging axes through her woods. Ellary looked and looked for them, trying to see where they had gone, but no matter how she twisted in front of her many mirrors, no matter how she turned her crystal portents, no matter how she shivered as she stepped out into the wood herself, she did not find them. She crept back into her little two-room shack and she breathed, for the first time since winter, deeply and fully of the air.

It was sweet. 

She opened the doors, both of them. She opened the windows, both of those too. She heard piping in the forest, not the Whistles of the Hunters, but satyr’s tunes. In the clearing around her little house, she danced in the light of day. She watched and she waited and she willed them to do something, but for so many days she almost lost track, no one came. 

It was sweet too. 

She knew this holiday would be brief, and it was. One morning she looked into her mirrors and, instead of her own dark form, she saw someone light and gleaming. This woman clanked as she walked, and a sword hung at her side, and she stumbled regularly over the undergrowth. But there was no axe dragging along behind her. There was no helmet covering her brilliant blonde head. And best of all, there was no Witch Whistling.

She wasn’t a witch. 

She just hated the Whistling. 

“This won’t do at all,” Ellary said, shaking her dark hair out of its braid and letting it fall freely down her shoulders in curls. She carefully spun, looking to another mirror, and from it plucked a wreath of summer flowers to place on her head. She took off her bedraggled apron, revealing a brand new dress of soft fabric that skimmed her slight curves. She smiled down at Pumpkin the fox, her companion, and then looked around the room. 

This - 

This _place_.

It really wouldn’t do. 

“Come, Pumpkin, we must tidy up,” she decided, and off Pumpkin went, presumably to do just that. Light streamed in the open window, and in her circle of mirrors she took it, and she bent it, and she twisted it just so, until the room grew and grew around her, reflected in her all-seeing glass. 

She bent and she twisted, she grew and she built, room by room by room. She picked pieces out of glass, a pretty chair here, a chandelier there. She covered the ground with soft, plush rugs, suddenly aware of how bare her feet had been.

Suddenly aware of how bare everything had been. 

She climbed out the window, slid down the branch of a nearby tree, and shimmied to the floor of the clearing she'd called home for years. It looked much different now, great old trees perfectly manicured, flowers blooming in neat little rows, a garden with plants near-ripe for the picking. The pond was clear and cool as ever, but its bank less steep, with a little deck spanning one side where she could sit in the sun. Over the grounds she roved, noticing details she didn't remember adding, adding details she didn't remember leaving out. Vines twisted up and over the stone walls of the great house, leaves and flowers blooming all around. The grand entrance had double doors of dark wood inlaid with vines of blonde and at their edges, gilding. She touched the door and deep within she felt the _beat, beat, beat_ , steady and unwavering, the life-sound of the forest. She touched her chest and felt it there as well. 

Pumpkin trotted up onto the grand front steps, and she lifted him without fear for her new dress. If it got fox fur on it, it did, and the knight would have to forgive her for it. She carried him safely inside, tucked up against her chest, and the large doors shut behind her with a soft thud. 

“There’s just one thing left to do,” she said to him, and climbed up the grand staircase in the center of the house, making her way back to the far corner of the manor. A large black door stood at the end of the hall, and she pulled a key out of her pocket to fit into the lock. It clicked as she turned it, the mechanism well-oiled and smooth. The door opened. 

Inside was her shack, just as she’d left it: the heaps of herbs on the low table; the large cauldron simmering over the fire in the hearth; the crystals and books haphazardly placed. She walked through it, Pumpkin held in her arms, and she found the room of mirrors. She checked the looking glass - and there, near her clearing, was that bright streak of light. 

_ Helaine.  _

The name sprang to her mind, and she smiled. 

Carefully, gently, she let Pumpkin down, and she drew dark cloth over the faces of her mirrors. All seven she covered, one by one by one, until nothing reflected back at her, until she Saw nothing at all. 

“There,” she said to Pumpkin. “That’s better isn’t it? Wouldn’t want her to get the wrong idea.” 

Outside, the sun was setting, and she pulled closed the little window against the night breeze. 

Together, the two of them left behind the mirror room and the herb shack and they closed the door behind them, locking all of it away. She stood at the top of the grand staircase and looked out over her creation, out the large conservatory windows, out into the darkening sky. 

“Let her come now,” she said to Pumpkin. “Now I’ve nothing to hide.”

**Author's Note:**

> This little snippet is part of a growing (ha!) story in my mind, and as I finish pieces, I'll post them here. Thank you for reading. <3


End file.
